


Terminal Infatuations

by ProdigySorcerer



Category: Star Trek: Lower Decks (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28698135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProdigySorcerer/pseuds/ProdigySorcerer
Summary: A collection for my Rutherford/Tendi fics, will have multiple stories, AU, etc.
Relationships: Sam Rutherford/D'Vana Tendi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 10





	1. Patch Notes

Technician: Samathain Rutherford, Systems Engineer  
Malfunctioning Unit: Samathain Rutherford, Systems Engineer  
Malfunction: Loss of system memory, a period of approximately 6 months  
Full Description:

Following the non-standard extraction of my implant by the late Lt. Shax during a combat situation, I have lost virtually all memory of the time since my implant was first activated and it’s extraction.

Technician recommends using more traditional, lower tech recordings as secondary backups and not rerouting my natural forming memories into an exterior artificial system.

Hence this journal.

Truth be told I don’t feel like I’ve really lost a lot with the memories, while 6 months is not a short amount of time, I still have my family, my friends, my colleagues around me I did not suffer an un-reparable loss.

What bothers me the most is what I might have gained or would have gained, my first memory waking up was being hugged by my incredibly beautiful nurse.

Said nurse who I quickly learned is named Tendi, claimed that we were close friends despite me not having any recollection of her.

By the time I could summon up the mental awareness to notice that my heart beat noticeably faster simply by looking at her, that her perfume was both exhilarating and familiar and that the relatively short amount of time she hugged me was enough to trigger a full body increase in temperature, Tendi had diagnosed my loss of memory.

Other medical personnel confirmed her findings, further formalizing my condition.

Mariner and Boimler on the other hand confirmed not Tendi’s medical findings but the fact that we were indeed friends, Tendi with her arrival on the Cerritos shortly after I had gotten my implant not only joined our little group but galvanized it from 3 people who spoke quite often after work into what Tendi describes as true friends always together always ready to back each other up.

Boimler’s subsequent departure and Mariner’s surprisingly vigorous stalking of him have lead me to believe that Tendi’s stories of balanced platonic friendship being the only bonds in our group is shall we say looking at the situation with rose tinted glasses.

Since a chronicle of Boimler and Mariner’s entanglements would take up whole tomes I will re-focus on Tendi.

If she can’t see or chooses not to see the unresolved tension between our command friends how does she see my own feelings about her ?

My personal quest to retrieve as much information as possible about the lost months has taken me through work logs, ship logs, social network postings, reviews of calls with my family (my mother and grandmother considering that me and Tendi would make a cute couple is neither here or there they think so about nearly every woman my age) all end up showing a constant Tendi presence in my life.

A constant presence which I seemed to encourage with my full efforts and yet one that never materialized in a relationship.

Had the Packled ambush not occurred given the statistics I was able to compile (the percentage of adult sites I was visiting in my private browsing was shaping up to be 70+% Orion based) I was approaching desperation and potentially disastrous actions i.e. expressing my feelings by writing poetry.

Final thoughts: memory is recoverable, main defect seems to be a heart which previously bounced back from rejection getting stuck on one woman, no possibility of replacement.

* * *

Medic: D’vana Tendi, Nurse  
Patient: D’vana Tendi, Nurse  
Diagnosis: Pathological need for positive reinforcement from social peers  
Full Description:

Hey journal, happy to see you again.

I’ll have you know that the self therapy aka writing you in the first place so that I can have a place to unload my negative thoughts without being afraid that everyone will hate me (and thus bottling it all up inside and after a noticeable pause replying with anything positive) is going very well.

Today when at the bar and ensign Barnes made an off-hand comment that I should try wearing lipstick instead of my usual lip gloss sometimes, I thanked her for the suggestion but I did NOT immediately run out and get a lipstick from the replicator, nor will I unless I really really like to.

Another positive example of my growth came later that evening when after a lengthy conversation with lieutenant Levy I did NOT agree with him that Spock had a secret human sister which he banished to the future because she was evil.

In fact my rebuke of him was so comprehensive that Barnes swears she saw him leave the bar later with tears in his eyes, but whatever those two are not important or what I wanted to talk to you about.

Rutherford has always been ... difficult ... in my quest to be both positive but not a pathological people pleaser.

In short I really, really, really want him to like me.

And not just me, also the me that doesn’t bottles up up things inside, for example the me that wanted to tell him right when we first met that he was an idiot for not paying more attention to Barnes instead of the diagnostic.

The fact that during our ill-fated holo lesson he confessed to me that he also sought out my approval just made me want him more.

I can’t remember ever wanting to let out my negativity more than when I understood he lost his memory and thus our entire thing didn’t exist for him anymore.

Now don’t get me wrong I stand by what I said that I will become his best friend anew for the second time.

But it scared me that I could not just admit my fear and my negative emotions in front of him, during the battle I screamed his name out of fear so I really do think he is the person I will eventually overcome my bottling up problem with.

It scared me that I couldn’t cry and mourn the loss of our 6 months together because I was afraid he would judge me, even as I am rationally aware that he as a person would not judge me harshly.

Anyway progress on project BFF version 2.0 is really good.

We moved on from him thinking I was his nurse to accepting we knew each other.

We moved on from that to him accepting we are friends.

I am pretty sure we are back to being sort of best friends.

So why, WHY do I want even more ???


	2. Time Management

T’Ana’s office door was right in front of me and I must have been sitting in front of it for at least 5 minutes trying to work up the courage to enter.

The worst part was that the chief nurse had assured me that the CMO was during her “free hours” and wouldn’t mind giving some advice to one of her best junior officers.

Aka me who was now contemplating walking away from medical.

If you’d have asked me about this sort of thing 3 days ago I would have hypo-sprayed you because you were obviously insane but that’s this has gotten to.

It all started with my most recent evaluation, I wasn’t stressed about my performance per say I was stressed about the time management criteria that was a factor in it.

Since Rutherford awoke in the hospital after our battle with the Pakleds I’ve been using up all my free time, as much as I could every week, to spend entire days or at least shifts with Sam personally helping him recover.

Every request was official and granted but it did add up, so I had been scarred about getting a dressing down or something.

Ok first off you need to understand Doctor T’Ana is smart, way smart I aspire to be at least 20% as smart as her.

Most beings in StarFleet speak their native tongue and rely on the Universal Translator (UT) to converse with others to translate their words into Federation Universal (which if my memory is correct is based on an Ancient Earth language I think Mariner or Boimler might be native speakers of it but this is besides the point).

The idea is that since the UT is kind of hard to stop and tinker with it, most beings just leave it in auto-translate mode which mean a lot of “thinking out loud” moments get translated even if the person would not wanted them to be.

Doctor T’Ana is different she’s one of the rare few that has learned other languages the old fashioned way, she herself is speaking in Federation Universal and she relies on the translator only for truly alien languages.

This has the benefit that she can speak out-loud or curse (most often) in her native Caitian and she could leave the UT not to translate Catian so she had her privacy.

Hence when we were at the time management part of my review she gave me a “satisfactory” and moved on but not before saying something in Catian.

Since I’ve started serving under her I’ve also tried to learn Catian, so I was able to translate her words as “Bloody foolish young girl wasting time!”.

Her words loomed over me for every waking moment since then.

Now she didn’t say anything official but what about the future ?

Sam still needed me.

Would T’Ana give me a demerit ?

Would she stop giving me permission to take my leave time ?

Would she throw me from the ship ?

All of these were nightmare scenarios, but what was the worst was me contemplating leaving Sam on his own, the stab I felt through my heart was not something I could have imagined.

Rutherford needed me, I ... needed him, to be better, not to be worse, to be healthy, not to be sick, till ...

If it came down to it, if me and the CMO could not reach an agreement I had other options for my career, the easiest option and the one which would keep me on the Science track would be to take the bio-science position on Levy’s project.

Granted trying to make an starship drive that worked on mycelium spores was god-damned idiotic, but somehow he had gotten resources for this.

Working on his project there would be less responsibilities, all the time I needed for Sam and I could maybe do something sane as part of the greater doomed project.

But only if this talk with T’Ana fails.

I opened the door finding the CMO’s office to be very poorly lit, two large demonic eyes rose to look at me reflecting the light of the corridor into some sort of hellish flames.

T’Ana then flicked her fingers and the office turned back to normal (Orion and human) light levels.

“Hello ... sorry if I was interrupting ... ICanGo if it’s a bad time.” I said as the doctor was still eyeing me with what looked like concern.

I guess my flinch upon seeing her had been very obvious.

“No, Tendi please come in. I was between poems anyway ruminating on the deeper meanings of some verses.”

“Bajoran poetry ?” I asked to keep the conversation going, then wanted to kick myself, the book she was holding was clearly printed with Bajoran script.

“Yes Akorem Laan, some consider him the greatest Bajoran poet of all time ... I personally find his work dryer than a nun’s vagina.”

“Uhmm ...” I didn’t know what to go from there.

“Earth has many monastic orders, some of them are female only they are called ‘nuns’ and they take vows of sexual abstinence.” she helpfully explained “You off-duty ? Care for some Bajoran springwine ?”

“I actually never had the opportunity ... how is it ?”

“Sweet, oh so sweet I’m going to get diabetes and put on 10 kilograms at least I swear ... but unfortunately it lacks the punch to really get you drunk.”

I took her up on her offer and the springwine was exactly as described, but sharing it did give the feeling of ease to eventually start my discussion about why I was here.

T’Ana listened in silence to my entire tale, my admission of having understood her words on the subject of time, my re-telling of how they affected me.

I finished with a plea for some clarity, I would be spending all the time I can with Rutherford how will that affect our working relationship in sick bay.

Even if the Catian had been inscrutable and silent allowing me to speak, I had the impression she knew of my final option to move out of sick bay if it came to it.

Even if I never spelled it out.

“Green girl is thought quick, tongue of cat-folk not easy.” T’Ana finally replied.

I got the essence of it, the grammar was horrible but the doctor might have been traducing some very eloquent words or expressions in her native Catian directly into Orion.

For someone doing it on her own without the UT it was admirable.

It was her way of demonstrating: “You didn’t know I could speak Orion, maybe I heard some thing you didn’t want to let out, or maybe I respected your privacy. You might be bright but your actions were not wise. Don’t assume you know everything about what I think or can do.”

I was speechless again, waiting for more harsh words and for the death sentence for my career in healing, only thing I could do to not shake like a leaf in the wind was to hope that I might with time learn to filter out Levy’s insane theories on my new project.

“My appraisal of you including your time management skills was the one I noted down, if you want me to elaborate on my comment we have the conversation with the understanding that we speak not as officers but as women.”

What the hell ? I nod my consent though to get her to continue.

“What I meant by you wasting your time ... Rutherford what is he to you ?”

“He is my best friend!” I reply automatically as this was the crux of my problem, only when I finish my sentence and I notice my heart is beating too fast that my tongue is twisting as it wants to utter more words, only then I understand the full scope of her question.

T’Ana’s eye narrow, she is not happy with my answer. I’m not happy with it myself.

The floor is suddenly very interesting, I can see my feet nervously shuffle.

I try to speak but only mumbling comes out. I’m not usually shy I’m a high energy person, I can feel the tension in me rising up ready to explode.

I’m one second away from grabbing the CMO’s coat and shaking her until she agrees to put me out of my misery.

“Two men went on that mission, only young Sam returned.”

I want to hit myself, Bajoran poems and Bajoran wine of course ... Shax was so strong and valiant the thought of him lost in battle, it’s almost as if it’s a bad dream as if the funeral wasn’t real and the next time we face some enemy he will be right there on the bridge with us.

“I don’t begrudge you that your man returned and mine didn’t, neither do I envy that you have more time than me ahead.”

“I ... do wish that I had used my time more wisely than writing yet another paper for a scientific journal “ the scientist in me couldn’t believe what she was saying but at the same time I understood her meaning ”AND I do think you can use your time with young Rutherford much more wisely than standing besides him while he looks over old photos.”

“That’s what I meant.” she finishes quietly and looks me in the eyes daring me to reach out for what I want, to have the romance she and Shax will never be able to have now.

“I understand! Permission to leave for the ensign quarters ?” I say and without wanting to I’m noticing that I’m standing upright as if ready for anything.

“God’s speed.” T’Ana answered her tone inspiring but with a hint of longing.

...

“Hey Rutherford !!! Hey Rutherford !!!” I basically shout as I jump on him the moment I see Sam near his bunk.

“Hey Tendi!” he smiles back.

“Sooo there’s ... there’s uhhmm aha there’s captain Freeman vocal jazz recital ... DoYouWant to ?” I finally remembered something happening tonight on the ship.

“Yes, sure.” Sam replies easily with another smile

“Cool, it’s a date then!”


End file.
